


Unsteady

by drneroisgod



Series: You're All The Things I've Got to Remember [3]
Category: H.I.V.E. Series - Mark Walden
Genre: But whatever, Gen, Non-Graphic Violence, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Raven Has PTSD, Violence against minors, honestly this story is only happy due to the fact that i am incapable of writing sadness, or at least she has been severely traumatized, raven deserves good!!!, which you might remember from the fact that all her friends got killed in the glasshouse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-01 07:46:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20811575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drneroisgod/pseuds/drneroisgod
Summary: Dr. Nero sends comfort to a distraught Raven while she is away on a mission.





	Unsteady

Sometimes, Raven fell into bed at night feeling unafraid. Hers was a name that was whispered nervously during covert meetings; hers was a shadow that spooked the most powerful men in the world as they flossed ham out of their cavities and tied their shoelaces on the golf course. Her work spoke for itself. 

She was not afraid, sometimes. 

Routine made it easier. Perhaps there would be a faculty meeting, or Nero would invite her to eat with him and discuss the details of her latest mission (or Italian opera). She’d slink off to her room and find something to listen to, maybe indulge in a popsicle. Sometimes she fell asleep on the couch. If her back hurt, she’d sleep on her tummy with the hot pad on top.

Then, there were the bad nights. Nights where she left the light on, and she left on one of those stupid American shows to keep her company until her hands stopped shaking and the sweat on the nape of her neck had misted away.

That was at home. Here, tonight, Raven could draw no comfort from banal laugh tracks or the glow of a lamp. She was hot: things she wished she could not remember burned through the backs of her eyes and poured out in diluvian seawater. It was not enough to warm her in the freezing hotel room. 

She wiped a spate of tears onto her knee, determined not to loose a single sound. The shame pinned her: she believed in ghosts. Such a quaint sorrow required exquisite control. Her primary solace was that she did not believe in being haunted—at least she knew that the things she saw were real. She could believe in a pair of gray hands, laying in the pristine snow a foot away from their nine-year-old owner. She could believe in the echo of someone vomiting at sunrise, and the shuffling of worn-through shoes as they stepped around the body after everyone had woken up. She could believe in the glint of a brother’s blood on her katanas. How could she not believe? She’d been there. She knew it happened.

And in the dark, it kept happening, and happening, and happening. 

A green light blinked on Raven’s blackbox. It was two in the morning, but she had nothing but the work to distract her. She flipped it open.

_ Call me when you get this _ , Dr. Nero had texted.  _ New information. Not urgent. _

Raven called him back. He picked up the phone quickly—it sounded like he was eating lunch.

“Raven,” he said briskly. “I wasn’t expecting a call from you so soon.”

“I decided to get an early start on the day,” Raven replied, her voice cold and steady. She didn’t want him to know. 

“I have a phone number I’m going to send you for a man called Torres. He’s a small player, he manages some minor smuggling operations out of East Berlin, but it’s possible he has video evidence we could use against our Canadian friends. What time is it there?”

“Too early for a cordial visit,” Raven replied. 

“So it is,” Nero said, sounding more certain. “Raven, is everything all right?”

“Perfectly.”

Nero took this in silence. Then he said, “I need to know I can trust you. I can’t have a compromised agent in the field—even with as low stakes as these.”

“Torres will meet me at the top of my game.” Raven timed her breaths, kept her voice as steady as a blade. “I just had trouble sleeping, that’s all.”

“There’s no shame in coming home, if you need to.”

“What do you know about shame, Max?” Raven snapped. “I’ll report if there are any new leads. Raven out.”

She snapped her blackbox shut, bitter that he could read her so thoroughly from six thousand miles away and angry with herself for keeping up this exhausting charade in front of the only adult she could trust. In her more honest moments, she wished she could share every snowy memory with him. She imagined that he would know exactly what to say—that he would make it better.

_ You could tell him _ , something told her.  _ He would listen. He has before. _

Raven fell back on her pillows and watched as a soft, horror-embossed moan drew itself out of her body and sank into the starched curtains. What she wanted was worse than impossible—it was frivolous. 

Her blackbox blinked again, and Raven tapped it, expecting more instructions, perhaps a reserved implication that she ought to give up. It was neither of those things: Nero had sent her a simplistic cartoon. A series of jokes, really. People died in violent ways and it managed to be funny. Despite herself, Raven laughed—or she snorted, anyway. She allowed the blackbox’s gentle glow to occupy her attention, just as she allowed herself to think that this was how Nero chose to give her shoulder a warm squeeze from so far away. 

She watched videos by the same comedian until sunlight breached the skyline. On steadier feet, Raven rose to take a cold shower. Torres would never have any suspicion that the young girl on his doorstep was anything but his worst nightmare. 


End file.
